It’s bitterly cold today, the kind of weather that makes me assume my memory of last week must have been a dream. Dark clouds scud past in little gangs and hail mercilessly for minutes, stinging exposed skin and rendering fingers rigid with the cold, before speeding off to reek havoc on some patch five or…
Author: theoreadexpress
A wannabe dryad in human clothing, based in the midlands of Ireland, interested in all things woodland
A sense of place and health
A visit to my homeplace recently while my parents were also hosting my brother’s kids had me wandering with a fresh eye around some places I first discovered aged 11, newly transplanted from city living in Dublin. My niece, at 8, is madly curious about everything and adores being outdoors, so I was quickly conned…
A tale of two forests
Today was #internationaldayofhappiness and I was lucky enough to have a half day from work. It is also Spring Equinox and I’ve had burning feet for days. There are some days you go to the forests and they’re all about the shyly winking primroses and the flirtatious glimpse of feather vanishing into the thicket. Other…
lunchtime getaways
Having spent the weekend in a sort of feverish lump alternately tunneling under bedclothes and then trying peevishly to throw them across the room with limp spaghetti arms, I decided I needed some air Monday and went for a walk in Charleville Castle wood over lunch. There is a definite squelch factor this week as…
Grounding exercises
When I was in secondary school we briefly had a religion teacher, a nun whose name I can’t quite remember, who used to enthuse about God’s beautiful birds singing beautiful songs in God’s beautiful sky. In my memory she is a round woman of pleasant but remote and scrupulous appearance, much given to theatrical sweeps…
network disconnects
Some days it feels like whatever protective skin I’ve grown over my emotions over my lifetime just gets burnt off, leaving my nerve endings exposed to the elements. I can usually tell when it’s starting again because music soars and swells and drags me around like a rag doll, colour and smells burn in my…
Bird therapy on Winterwatch
I’ve become very detached from TV over the past few years and was never really familiar with TV beyond RTE channels anyway. As a result really great things like BBC’s Winterwatch were not on my radar until I was pointed at it recently (thanks!) It’s a gorgeous production – the thermal camera images were beautiful…
Where trees stood ..
On attempting to delve into Ireland’s past, one of the frustrating things that any amateur historian collides with very quickly is the dearth of primary historical record. Society before English rule was very much into its oral tradition, and while I’m sure a great many things were recorded in some more permanent fashion, at least…
A short enthusiasm about mini forests
Every so often my day job drives me to a certain point of frustration where I start to question if I really actually need to eat, have a roof over my head and so on. It’s a good job most of the time, but some days there is that little stretch too far, that mow-all-in-their-path…
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